Finishing my oven

Originally posted by rsshellim View Post

Hi all,

Now it’s time to wrap the ceramic fibre blanket and attach the flue. I few pointers would be nice since I have never done this before. Firstly the blanket I’m going to wrap around with chicken wire. Secondly, what do you guys recommend in terms of finishing on top of the blanket. .

I wrapped my dome with four 1" layers of blanket insulation. I laid the first layer of blanket over the dome and where the blanket would 'wrinkle' from trying to conform to the curved surface of the half-sphere, I sliced the insulation. Overlapped one edge of the slice over the other, Then trimmed off the overlapping "V" piece of insulation so the edges would meet nicely and the blanket would lay flat.

I did that to all four layers. I oriented each layer different;y so the seams from one layer did not align with the seams from the previous layer. Once you get the technique down it goes fast. I used most of the V cutoffs to insulate over my landing arch. They tucked nicely into the contours

As to the wire reinforcement that goes over the blanket, I used sheets of stucco lathe, but chicken wire will work too. Using the expanded diamond mesh stucco lath, I used the same slicing principle as the blanket to get the mesh to lay flat on the dome but I did not cut out the overlapping V shapes. I let them overlap and then used rebar wire ties to cinch the mesh tight. I used a few tapcons around the circumference of the dome to secure the mesh to the hearth slab. Being easy to bend, chicken wire can conform to the curves of the dome. A lot of the builds I've seen, builders then just wrap the chicken wire covered dome with thin wire to hold the chicken wire in place.

I then covered my wire with a couple layers of home brew stucco mix. Each layer about 3/8" thick.

Good luck!

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